I’ve walked the Irish countryside most of my life.
In particular, the hills and rivers near my home. I often walk the path behind my home. The path leads through the forest, across the fields to the cliffs. I would stare at the ocean for hours. It’s the best part of living outside a small town - those calming, solitary walks.
Yet, if the timing is right, anything can happen.
I am a retired ghostwriter. I never really cared for writing, which is why I never wrote a book of my own. Yet, ghostwriting for some notable individuals paid well and I had the talent for it - so I did it. It was mostly biographies. The client would tell me what their angle was and I would spin it into a book. I’ve written for a lot of actors and a handful of politicians. Some stories were harder to weave than others, but that didn’t matter when money was pouring into my bank account.
It always pays to ask for a cut of the royalties too. You won’t always get it, but when you do, it’s pretty good.
When I had more than enough money, I got the hell out. I felt dirty writing for those kinds of people and some of them made me feel unsafe. I bowed out just in time too, as some figures got into hot water. I took the money, and bought a home in the Irish countryside, not too far from my hometown.
The simple life is great, I won’t ever knock it, but boredom creeps in now and then.
That day, I should have stayed at home. The clouds were a dark gray, the ground was damp from the previous night’s rain. It would be a tough walk to the cliffs, made more miserable if the rain started up again while I was out there. I settled into my chair, the fire crackling at my feet. I like to be warm most of the time. All the signs were pointing towards staying at home.
Yet, I am pretty much a Luddite in this day and age. I have a computer, but all I ever did with it was answer emails and online banking. I stopped writing long ago, and cheap entertainment on the internet bored me as much as the silence. The modern trappings failed me and my patience was thinning.
A spot outside my window looked almost dry.
“Agh, screw it!” I said, putting my cup of tea down. Boredom quickly led to frustration. I needed to do something. “A quick walk…there and back.”
I marched through the house, getting ready. Sturdy boots, a windbreaker, and a flashlight for the forest, which was dark enough even on sunny days. I wanted to get through it without tripping over a root or rock.
When I stepped outside, the cold air pinched my nose, but the rest of me was fine. I tucked my long hair into the hood of the jacket. It was quiet. Not much wind, no droplets from the clouds. Of course, it didn’t always drizzle before it rained, but it was a good hint.
I focused on the forest. It was pitch black between the trees. I briefly considered walking around it, but it was late enough in the day that I didn’t want to return home when it was too dark.
I pressed the rubber button on my flashlight and followed the path into darkness.
*
The path through the trees usually took fifteen minutes, but a good portion of it was uphill. That meant rocks, an uneven path, and one or two annoying trees whose roots stuck out of the ground, waiting to trip me. I should have been out of there in good time, the flashlight aiding me the whole way. Still, it was taking longer than I expected.
I took a large step up, my leg shaking.
I decided to take a moment to catch my breath. I saw a rock, it looked mostly dry. Sitting down, I looked up and down the hill. It was completely dark and still. It may seem like an odd comparison, but the pitch black between the trees I couldn’t help but liken to still water in a pond.
I bravely switched the light off, just feeling what it was like in that solitary void. I was surrounded by nothing, just the gentle sounds of the forest. In that inky nothing, I listened to those sounds and enjoyed them. Some sounds caught me off guard, strange, familiar, and repetitive. I turned my flashlight back on.
I didn’t want to turn back. I figured I would be out soon enough, but instead of walking to the cliffs, I would walk around the forest edge back home. I pushed forward.
*
Light between the trees. Gray and dismal. I was relieved, marching forward and turning between two large rocks. I walked right into a clearing, more trees around, just as thick and dark. More importantly, the clearing was almost filled with a mansion. I don’t mean a large home, I mean a royalty-grade, multi-level, fifty-room minimum mansion.
The style wasn’t gothic, yet the stone and woodwork were dark and jagged at times. Otherwise, it looked modern enough. Surrounding the place was an unkempt garden, dying hedges, and a few concrete benches and fountains. The fountains long since dried out.
You might think me crazy for noticing this, but that was the major indicator that the building was out of place. Even struggling gardens were still lush with green foliage in my part of the world. Yet, this garden looked like it had been torched before it was drowned. Dried leaves and twigs.
As for the entrance, it was on the corner of the building of all places. Rounded steps leading to a single door.
For a moment, I took it all in, trying to understand how I could have missed it on my walks before. I was just about to realize how impossible it all was when I heard creaking. I thought it was the house at first, but it was the trees. I saw them shift, then the wind hit me too. It was strong, and no matter how strong your boots are, if your stance is off, you are going to fall - and I fell hard.
I reached out, catching myself with my hands, but breaking the flashlight. Cheap plastic on stone - it broke into shards and the batteries sprung out. I received a few cuts across my palm, which hurt more than the fall.
A growing roar beyond the trees. I was examining the blood on my palms when a droplet of water fell into it, mixing with my cuts. It began to rain, building faster. I got to my feet properly, bracing myself in the wind, deciding to take shelter in the entranceway of the building.
Or be blown away with the dead twigs and leaves.
*
I think I heard snaps among the noises, the sound of branches, maybe even tree trunks, being overwhelmed by the force of the storm. I couldn’t help thinking how awesome it was, but I would have appreciated it a lot more if I was still sitting in front of my fireplace.
At that moment, I just felt scared. I kept looking at my hand. The cuts weren’t deep, but droplets of blood kept going. I wasn’t at the age where it was easier to get cuts, not yet. I decided to grab a few tissues from my pocket and hold them clenched in my hand.
It was time to ask for help. I could see lights inside. I looked at the door. I reached for the knocker.
My hand closed around the old metal and as I lifted it, the screws came loose. It surprised me enough to let it go and the metal fell at my feet, hitting the stone with a clang and clatter as the intricate pieces smacked into each other. I cursed and scrambled to pick it up, maybe even try to put it back, but the screws were rusted to hell.
I bumped my head on the door and ended up pushing it - it was already open.
The lights inside were the gentle old kind, where you could see the filament. I guess they provided some illumination, but not much and it hardly added any warmth to the cold white walls of the interior. I saw wooden benches, tables, magazines, a desk, and even potted plants. Although the plants themselves were stalks of dried twigs, the place looked clean.
It wasn’t what I expected at all. It didn’t look like the entrance to a normal home. I looked around the front door, finding a plaque, but it was too weathered to read. It had to be someplace of importance.
I decided then to walk inside, thinking it might have been open to visitors. If not, I would explain myself and leave if they asked. At first, the idea of it not being someone’s massive home eased my tension a little. It made it feel less like trespassing as my soggy form trudged inside.
“Hello?” I called.
No response. I tried calling again before entering, feeling a chill run up my spine as I did. I turned around and shut the door. The wind blew it open again, so I propped it closed with a nearby pot. Good enough for the wind, but open just enough for someone else.
“What a mess,” I muttered to myself. The fear I felt at that moment came more from embarrassment. I was intruding and moving things around, with a broken door knocker in my hand and a clump of red tissues in the other. “Phone…phone…what am I talking about? I didn’t see any phone lines. Oh, Lord, someone will have a cellphone.”
I turned around to look back at the reception. Cheap linoleum floors, the kind that was easy to clean. That was my first clue as to what kind of place I was in. I approached the desk and saw brochures with smiling faces, detailing different disorders. There were a lot of Dementia brochures. My final clue was a clipboard. A few torn, old pages. There was some printed text, but also some scrawling I couldn’t decipher. Beneath the ripped paper was a logo peaking out. I lifted papers - Amber Oak Mental Institution, Peace of Mind Just In Time.
“Hell of a slogan,” I thought to myself.
There were three hallways - one to my left and one to my right going down the sides, and one behind the desk, leading deeper into the asylum. I moved my foot and heard a small splash. Looking down, I saw a puddle of water, not coming from me or the entrance, but from the hallway to my left. It was slowly growing, flowing into the reception.
Dripping. My blood had soaked through the tissues already, droplets hitting the water and dissolving into vanishing clouds.
“Uh,” I started to back away, making small sounds. The water lapped up against the desk. “Anyone there? It’s flooding in the-!”
Movement. A distortion in the darkness of the hallway to the left. I don’t know how she could have moved so fast, or maybe it was just my eyes coming to grips with what they were seeing. Right in the entrance, was a woman. Tall, taller than the doorway. Her body, from head to toe, was wrapped in gray, decorative fabric. Her face was covered, her fingers individually wrapped. Mummified, but alive, as far as I could see.
And she stood there, the water soaking into the fabric around her feet. She walked into the reception, elegantly, behind the desk and then down the hallway to my right, leaving behind wet footprints.
All the fear I felt was the genuine thing. I’ve been frightened, and anxious, but never so deathly afraid as I was in that moment. The confusion couldn’t dilute that fear like the water did my blood. I dropped the tissues and the world shook.
I dropped to my knees and covered my head. I heard the crash of stone, the crunch of wood, the shattering clatter of glass. I felt something hit my back, but it rolled off. I only realized I was screaming when the noise lessened and things became still.
What I had heard were trees falling, large ones close to the house, which crashed into the corner of the mansion, decimating the entrance and blocking it with a thick wall of branches and debris. What had hit me was some of that debris and pain was beginning to radiate from where it hit me. I thought the wetness on my face was the rain that somehow got in or my tears, but it was the blood from my hand.
I was close to curling up and crying in some dry spot of the reception, but the fear of bleeding out was growing. It didn’t make sense for my palm to bleed so much and so fast. I needed to do something and running away wasn’t an option.
I didn’t take the paths to my left and right, I wanted nothing to do with where the tall woman was going or where she came from. Instead, I took the hallway behind the reception desk and delved deeper into the asylum, squeezing my wrist and trying not to look at my cuts.
I was looking for a bathroom, or a room that looked clinical, in the hopes of finding bandages. Yet, when I looked at my hand, I wondered if they would do anything. The cuts seemed larger and deeper, yet the pain I felt wasn’t as great as those minor cuts. At no point did I think I was losing my mind, it was all too real.
And the blood loss started to take effect. I felt lightheaded, almost like I was drunk. My feet kept bumping into each other and my vision blurred. I kept passing by rooms and walking down the hallway, but nothing changed. The rooms were locked, or empty, or filled with rusted metal bed frames.
The room shifted, the floor flew towards my face and everything went dark.
*
I woke up to a plucking sensation. Tweezers, or something similar, pinching my skin and pulling until the elasticity won over the grip and it snapped back. My head tried to understand my position before my eyes opened. I was seated, my head resting on my shoulder, my part stretched out in front of me as I was slumped against a table. The edge of which dug into my side.
I groaned like a zombie. I was so tired and uncomfortable. The coldness of the rip seemed to soak into me like I was a sponge taking in the water. When I opened my eyes, I saw that familiar darkness. It was the same void that I was in when I sat in the forest. Inky, undisturbed water. It was cold, hiding something.
I raised my head and tried to pull my arm towards myself. It wouldn’t budge. I felt a hand gripping my wrist, but it wasn’t my own. This hand was cold and strong. The plucking at my palm was the tug of thread and the cold insertion of a needle stitching the wound.
I groaned. I think I asked the person to stop, my fear growing as I realized they were stitching in the dark. The pain started to set in. The feeling of that needle digging into my skin was growing unbearable. I didn’t need to see the needle to know it was jagged, strange lumps and edges being pulled through my skin.
“Stop,” I murmured again, my tongue feeling as dry as cotton.
One last pull. My hand lifted and I heard a snap of thread. My hand fell to the table, the grip vanished and I pulled my hand back immediately. I pulled it too fast, I fell out of the chair. I saw a sliver of light ahead of me, peeking beneath a door. I got to my feet, and my legs felt like lead. That drunk feeling had reached its peak.
I heard footsteps growing closer. I began to cry, as I felt anything but safe.
I reached for the door, pulled it open, and saw the cool interior of the asylum. I was on the second floor, looking down into a large open room, a set of stairs circling the wall leading down. I didn’t think about walking down them, my eyes glued to the figures. I saw three more tall women, just like the first, wrapped in gray fabric. One of them might have been the first.
There was a fourth figure, mummified in red fabric, a man. A cloak of red hung from his shoulders. He faced the gray women, saying something, or perhaps making sounds that tried to be words.
A hand reached over my shoulder, and pushed the door closed, leaving me in darkness again. I felt hands on my shoulders, they turned me around and then pushed me into the darkness. I stumbled and fell to the ground.
Into the dirt.
I felt the dampness, I felt a cold wind. I curled into the mud, as it was easier than raising my head to look up. I saw a cloudy sky, trees, and the hedges behind my home. I was at the edge of the forest behind my house. The tears stopped and I only felt empty.
*
My cuts were just like they were the first time, not any bigger or deeper. The stitching was clean, the thread black and waxy. After a rest in my own bed, I felt a little stronger, but the stitches were gone, and the wounds closed.
I shivered and stumbled to my kitchen to make a breakfast I couldn’t taste. It only got better. My energy returned, my sensations stronger, fewer lapses of concentration. I took it very slowly before I felt ready to approach the forest, although I had yet to walk back through it. My walks are much longer now, as I take the long way around.
I’m not a therapist, but I know what happened to me was traumatizing. I knew I needed to deal with it somehow, to make sense of it. I wrote it down, not what you’re reading right now, but my version. I still add to that version sometimes - when I remember a detail, a sound, something. Yet, no matter where I look, there is no record of the Amber Oak Mental Institution.
And I think it’s time I wash my hands of it by giving it to someone else.
I’m telling you this not because I need to, but because I want to. I think there is more to it, I think this place is real, that it exists, somewhere. Maybe you can make sense of it, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t plan on revisiting the forest, or this memory, if I can help it. I’m done with it all.